


Perfecting the Man

by RurouniHime



Series: Day series [7]
Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Anniversary, Children, Dreams, Established Relationship, Forging (Inception), Introspection, M/M, Married Couple, Parenthood, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-21
Updated: 2012-06-21
Packaged: 2017-11-08 05:31:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/439686
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RurouniHime/pseuds/RurouniHime
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Arthur knows his husband draws the line at stealing actual people.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Perfecting the Man

**Author's Note:**

> Inception doesn’t belong to me. Oh, if only.
> 
> Thank you so much to snottygrrl for being my beta for this, and especially for the EXCELLENT title. *HUGS*

_The soul is healed by being with children. ~Fyodor Dostoevsky_

 

It starts a little before their fourth anniversary when they take a job with Peters again. Eames goes off to Canada for a week and a half to study up on their mark’s cousin, leaving Arthur behind to cozy up to the client, get all the pertinent information, make sure their collective efforts aren’t going to be blown wide open by a childhood allergy to almonds or some other tiny detail, considering the mark and his cousin grew up in the same house. 

This whole scenario spanning the US and Canada is a situation Arthur did not have in mind when he signed on to work with his husband. _With._ Operative word.

The day of Eames’ return, when Arthur gets in from the most trying of meals at the swankiest restaurant that serves the richest food on earth, his husband is already under, side by side with an angelic-looking Ariadne. Sonya, now Peters’ sister-in-law, asks if he’s ready to kill the client yet in her usual friendly manner, but Arthur doesn’t feel like waiting any longer to see his other half, thank you, so he hooks himself up and drops into the dream. When he stands up, turns around, and locates his teammates, he only gets two steps before he stops utterly, arrested in the act of speaking and thinking and breathing. 

Eames stands in the middle of an empty country road that is leafy and orange with fall. He’s wearing khakis and a blue shirt with rolled sleeves, the buttons at the throat undone. He has sunglasses perched on his head and a baby boy with a curly brown tangle of hair balanced against his hip. 

Eames has come back from the dry white north with a child in his arms.

Not literally. Arthur knows his husband draws the line at stealing actual people. 

But… yeah. And Eames and the toddler are _discussing._

Arthur can’t hear what the baby’s saying. But Eames’ mellifluous accent comes low and soothing, everything Arthur’s been missing in a single, perfect flow, and he can’t… look away. Ariadne is up the road apace tinkering with the slope of an Irish-looking hill (which is to say it is the greenest green that ever greened and there’s an honest-to-god castle eroding on the edge of the horizon), and if Arthur could just turn around, drag his eyes to her instead, maybe this will… will just…

“Oh,” Arthur murmurs, soft.

“So you like cake, yeah? Chocolate? I’m rather partial to buttermilk myself. With chocolate icing, though, because you’re right, it’s fantastic.”

The baby babbles with his— his? Yes— fingers stuck in his mouth. Eames nods.

“Yes, I’m sure we can get you some. How are you eating anyway these days? Utensils, or still fingers?”

Arthur steps off the path like he’s been pushed and wanders into the woods, out of sight, to think.

**

Eames has never forged two people at once. Different personas at different times, sure. He wouldn’t be worth his salt if he couldn’t do that, and he’s so good at it Arthur could weep with how utterly _gifted_ his husband is. He has this strange urge to broadcast it worldwide, to brag like an arrogant teenager and point the spotlight where it damn well belongs, if not for the teensy fact that being well-known is a dreamshare death sentence.

But their mark’s cousin is a single father with a young child. He’s absolutely necessary to getting the sort of information they’re after, the only person the mark trusts, and the mark would never believe a cousin without a kid in his arms. The baby, the _family_ , lifts away their target’s walls, his constant self-awareness, his paranoia and anger and discomfort with his own life. It’s the trickiest forge Eames has done yet, two separate personalities ready at any one moment, real and believable and coexistent. 

By its very nature, it involves a type of projection. Like passing a gun back and forth, only this time the weapon wrought out of thin air is sentient, and must remain that way. It’s the wildest card the team holds at any one time. Inherently unpredictable, and most easily singled out by the mark’s own projections. 

They give the dream’s initial tier to Eames. The discussion is heated. They need Arthur in the second level, and Peters as well, so neither of them can carry that load. Ariadne offers because she designed every nook and cranny, but as they all know, in the end, the added burden of keeping the dreamscape together also lends the dreamer that much more control over his surroundings, a certain capacity for manipulation. And Eames is the first to say he’ll need every edge he can get. 

As forging with his body as canvas is old hat, Eames spends the first week in his own skin, detailing the child persona to perfection.

It’s the single most captivating thing Arthur has _ever_ seen.

He finds excuses to go down into the dream whenever Eames is in. To help Ariadne layer the second level with more Penrose steps. To specify the minutiae of that country lane with what he’s researched about the mark’s childhood. To help Yusuf get the Somnacin compound just right or to learn more about Sonya’s experimental demilitarization techniques.

The baby’s name is Jacob. He’s almost two, likes to draw with (and devour) sidewalk chalk, and falls asleep to _The Napping House_ and _Little Bear_. He looks nothing like Eames and everything like his father— Arthur should know, he did the initial background research. But he fits so perfectly in Eames’ arms, looks at Eames with such pristine trust, smiles when Eames smiles and laughs when he laughs.

Eames’ smile is so easy: chaste and genuinely glad. Despite the extra exertion, his shoulders hold no hint of the strain that usually visits on jobs. His very stance is wide open, and yet focused in an extremely riveting, attractive way.

Arthur is in love with the way his husband looks on a regular basis. This… jerks his heart so hard he half expects it to kick him awake.

The day Eames ambles up and passes Jacob into Arthur’s arms with a kiss to both their temples, Arthur’s heart actually stops, for just an instant.

“Sit with Arthur for a while, there we go.” Eames gives Arthur’s mouth a kiss this time, a smile as he pulls back and steps away, walking round them with a critical eye. “Hmm. Can you— Arthur, ruffle his hair? Just your fingertips is fine.”

Dazed, Arthur does, sliding his fingers through soft curls. Jacob shouts and shakes his head, clapping both hands over his mouth as he giggles. His eyes are little downward-arcing crescent moons, full of mirth, and Arthur can’t help it: he laughs. Tucks the baby closer and laughs.

When he looks over at Eames, his husband’s lips are parted, one hand half outstretched, fingers ticking gently as if he’s playing an instrument. It’s just something he does, a physical manifestation of whatever’s going on in his head as he tinkers. But the look on his face is open in an entirely new way. His eyes climb over Arthur’s face, exposed and wondering. 

Eames moves closer, just one step. “And now… Can you…”

He gestures. Arthur turns Jacob carefully in his arms, settling the baby’s back against his chest. Jacob pats the hand Arthur has around his middle, kicks his legs, then turns to look up at him.

Arthur doesn’t even think. He leans down, bumps his nose to Jacob’s, an Eskimo kiss.

Eames’ smile bursts wide and satisfied.

**

“So, that.” Ariadne points with Arthur’s coffee at Eames and Jacob, now taking a tour through the second level’s city-under-construction. Eames is bent double, walking Jacob up and down her Penrose steps in the Chrysler Building’s doppelganger. Tiny fingers wrap themselves around Eames’ thumbs.

“I’m a little…” Ariadne trails off with a sigh. She turns a cozy smile Arthur’s way, and passes him his coffee. It’s dream coffee. If you let it happen, the effects are twice as marvelous, without the caffeine addiction.

Arthur takes it from her, nearly misses.

“And I think you’re a little,” Ariadne finishes, eyebrows lifted. 

Arthur clears his throat and holds the cup with both hands— and both eyes— this time.

**

Eames the father is more like Eames than ever, and at the same time, another person entirely. He is attentive, tranquil. There is no hint of impatience anywhere, just an alert, steady concentration that Arthur has only seen directed at one other human being: him. Eames’ composure is absolute, and yet there is little sense of effort. It’s natural. 

Unexpected.

Eames lets Ariadne play with the baby in the little meadow just outside their mark’s childhood home, even invites Yusuf in to interact with Jacob while he tries sliding into the father’s skin. When they visit what will be the second, less stable level, contact between baby and forger must be absolute, but in Eames’ dream, there is far more room to maneuver. Arthur is there the first time, tweaking to finalize the landscape when Eames loses his grip on the father: the façade slips and the baby starts crying, jolted out of his game of collecting grass blades in a little pile with Sonya. Eames is there immediately, lifting him up, soothing him quiet again, walking him in a wide circle through a field that shimmers and wafts like rippling water. When he finally stops— when their surroundings return to normal— Jacob is fast asleep on Eames’ shoulder, mouth open in that funny, squished way babies just don’t care about.

Eames passes him carefully into Arthur’s arms this time and steps back to try again.

It’s overwhelming, what Arthur’s feeling these days. 

He gets their day off from Peters without much trouble: Peters is still a little shamefaced about making their wedding day into such a fiasco. Arthur hasn’t been able to spend much quality time with his husband at all these last couple weeks, in dreams or out of them: just the bed they fall into side by side each night and hustle out of each morning to shower, toss clothes on. Eat a utilitarian breakfast and get back to the grift. For Arthur, it’s stamping down all the client’s concerns as well as the tiny setbacks that tend to rear this close to zero hour. He’s used to it, a part of the gig he has well in hand, even looks forward to. For Eames, it is hours with an infusion line in his arm, attaching father to baby and working out the final painstaking touches.

They’ve had sex since Eames’ return. There is no way they couldn’t, not when they’re together again after such a break, not when Arthur feels physically bereft every time Eames is out of his sight these days. But the job’s toll on his husband is physically obvious: every free moment is one that could be spent sleeping. The sex has been quick, frenzied, as it often is when they’re both aching so acutely for it. Hand jobs mostly, in that miniscule stretch between bedtime and sleep. Heady, languorous kissing over an abbreviated lunch break a little while back, when Arthur hadn’t been able to hold the professionalism, not with everyone else out of the room and Eames right there, head resting in one hand as he pored over Arthur’s files. It got out of hand and Arthur had revered every second of it, sitting on Eames’ desk and bracketing his husband’s hips with his thighs as Eames tugged at his tie and ran his other hand everywhere else, right up until the instant they heard feet on the stairs and Eames turned his body to shield Arthur’s so he could fix the lay of his vest again.

One brief, desperate surge in the early hours of the morning, while the quiet of the hotel settled like snow around them.

Arthur orders takeout from the best Venezuelan restaurant in the city. He places the Muscat beside the truffles, and doles them out to Eames in between bites of plantain and rice. He kisses the flavor back out of Eames’ mouth afterward. When their plates are clean, Eames undresses him right there at the table. Gets down on his knees and brings him off in the excuse for a hallway. Fucks him slowly in the steaming, too-small bathtub, then again on the little couch, naked and still dripping wet. Arthur straddles his lap and relishes the bittersweet ache of not having done this in a while, anticipating the following day when he’ll feel every single inch of it whenever he moves, so very glad of the fact that it’s still today, and will be for some time yet. They strain together, hands grasping and tangling, breathing across each other’s mouths and not kissing, eyes open— locked— and Arthur thinks of Eames with a child sleeping in his arms and feels a pang made all the deeper when he comes.

“You alright?” Eames breathes just after, fingers trailing in a slow tremble down Arthur’s cheek. He brushes Arthur’s mouth with his again and again, tiny kisses he can’t seem to stop.

“Happy anniversary,” Arthur utters, throaty and full.

Eames’ grin is slow and blissful. “Happy anniversary to you.”

** 

He knows they can’t have it. Not like this.

Two years ago almost to this day, hearing his own front door ease open with a click, watching strangers enter his house and knowing that Eames had been right, and that they were here for his husband, to _kill_ his husband… Arthur knew they couldn’t have this. He just hadn’t had the proper context in which to look at it yet.

Now he does, Eames breathing easily in his arms, the window open and a small part of Arthur still itching to go over, lock it tight, put one more barrier between them and a bullet. Instead he lets the breeze sift over their bare skin, and grieves a little.

He didn’t think he could fall even deeper into Eames, but he could, oh, he probably still can, and it’s a much more cavernous, vast, beautiful chasm than he’d suspected. Eames as a father is the most arousing thing he’s ever seen, as well as the most sobering. The most frightening because Arthur knows exactly what the two of them get up to, and how the two realities skitter apart like oil dripped into water.

To get his children back, Cobb had to quit. And he’s never come back, not even once. These realities don’t just skitter apart; they actively destroy one another.

Eames makes a sound, half a word. His arm tightens; his hand slides a little way down Arthur’s side and back up again. His mouth is half open, his eyelashes dark and full, sending shadows over his cheeks. Arthur tucks Eames’ head closer into the curve of his neck and threads fingers through hair of a wholly different texture than dreamshare curls.

**

The job has its ruts, but none of them involve Eames’ forge. It is seamless, the baby as well-realized as the father, and Arthur is grateful he’s in a position to watch it go down, to witness as Eames subtly pries all those barriers loose for Peters, who descends into the second level and dismantles the remainder with efficient skill. The problems lie in waiting out Yusuf’s timer, and Arthur’s glad, as projections careen down the country road within the sights of his rifle, that Eames has let Jacob sift away already. He will not watch his husband take a bullet with the baby still in his arms, especially if he is the one firing.

**

It’s a letdown afterward, and welcome. Arthur likes the time to relish a job well done, especially if it’s been completed in adversity. The payoff is so much sweeter. But tonight, in a new city for as long as it takes to sleep and catch a plane, his mind has already packaged, sealed and stored away their jaunt through another man’s brain, and Arthur is left feeling sunken, like he’s missed a crucial step in his routine.

He feels hungry without actually wanting food. A different sort of craving, and only half of his distraction is his husband’s naked body resting against his. He’s restless in spite of having been escorted neatly and devastatingly over the edge twice in the last hour by someone who might know his body better than he does. Outside, the streets are neon-lit and noisy, and the laughter, the conversation of the people on the sidewalk below, soothes. He touches Eames’ fingers as they trace idly across his ribs.

“You ever wanted to be a dad?”

Eames rises onto one elbow. His brow is pinched, just a little. Scrutiny, all for Arthur, and Arthur can feel it as Eames looks him over. He is never apologetic about that, nor wasteful: he gathers what he needs from it and moves forward. “Not… as such. I’ve always been too busy being me.”

Arthur nods. He knows the feeling, the intense lack of interest. The knowledge that he doesn’t want to resent his potential offspring, and that was the only way it could go for a long, long time.

Eames touches his chin with the back of one finger. “Do you?”

“Can’t,” Arthur states, and Eames raises his eyebrows. Arthur shakes his head. “No, I mean we can’t. Right now, doing. What we do.”

He doesn’t realize he’s been saying ‘we’ until Eames smiles. It’s the type of smile Arthur used to hate, the one that knows him right through his center, despite the blockade. Eames presses Arthur back with a kiss, coaxes him into it with a sure understanding of how he works, then slides to the side and nuzzles the corner of Arthur’s mouth.

“You want kids,” he murmurs softly, and looks Arthur right in the eye.

Arthur lets himself drop back, feeling inexplicably like he’s sinking again. His stomach hurts. He shakes his head, slow, and watches the smile drop from Eames’ face.

“Are you ready to leave this?” Arthur asks. Already knows.

Eames’ silence is answer enough.

~

_The guys who fear becoming fathers don't understand that fathering is not something perfect men do, but something that perfects the man. ~Frank Pittman_

 

~fin~

**Author's Note:**

> Man. Been WAITING for this one. Guh. I really want to see Eames do this, and I want to see Arthur seeing him doing it.
> 
> Just as a note, there will not be any mpreg in this universe. Alas.


End file.
